KJZZ’s Friday NewsCap revisits some of the biggest stories of the week from Arizona and beyond.
To talk about Arizona’s newest Supreme Court justice, changes in the governor’s office and more are Barrett Marson of Marson Media and Democratic strategist Tony Cani.
Conversation highlights
On conflicting reports of a federal budget freeze
MARK BRODIE: The federal government might not be sending money to the states that President Trump issued an executive order. A memo then that that was rescinded, but there's still some questions about, about whether or not that money is coming and this like Arizona gets a pretty good amount of money from the federal government. This could be a pretty huge thing if it doesn't come, right?
BARRETT MARSON: Yeah, of course. I mean, every state, you know, we all pay into the buckets and then the buckets flow this way. You know, when dealing with, you know, hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars, it's great to have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers.
You know, I, I've seen the, you know, the memo had this executive order from, I'm sorry, it wasn't even an executive order, it was a memo from OMB, has out there, you know, freezing everything. And then they said they rescinded the memo, but not the policy, just the memo. And it's like, it's created a lot of confusion, and, you know, we, we do rely on, you know, Meals on Wheels, and things like that, and, you know, we saw that the Medicaid portal in almost every state was down, and they're back up now.
So, there is a lot of confusion, and, you know, before we get to Tony, who will have an immense amount of things to say about this, I, I will say that like this “flood the zone” thing that they are doing, I is probably pretty effective. Because they'll do 10 things, three of which we will be incredibly up in arms about, three of which, you know, we'll question about and, and complain and make jokes up, and then four, we don't even notice.
And it's, you know, that's, that's the point of it, right? We don't notice some of the stuff that they're doing, because there's so many other things, the, the chaos that's created.
BRODIE: And Tony, some of these things are things that like people do notice. Barrett mentioned like Meals on Wheels, Medicaid, like things that people in their day to day lives kind of rely on.
TONY CANI: Yeah, this is very important stuff. If there's something to get up in arms about, it's this, and the fact that people were up in arms, it's why they either rescinded or whatever it is that they did. I mean, you know, this isn't really a freeze. They just made a decision unilaterally to stop providing resources to the most vulnerable people in our country.
In, at the behest apparently of the richest man in America, maybe in the world, and it's just, it's just a super-dangerous precedent. At least the backlash caused them to sort of back off this, but you know, I, I was frustrated that there were some Republicans that in Arizona really did a good job pushing for things like the I-10 expansion.
And that is one of the things that was potentially at jeopardy here with this, and that includes with like the, you know, potential of the infrastructure spending from before, you know, you got a guy like Sen. [T.J.] Shope, and he was very quiet about it, at least like, you know, Congressman [Greg] Stanton sent a letter saying, hey, we need at least clarification on what on earth it is that you're going to be funding and what you're not funding because we have stuff that we need to do.
And so like hopefully this is getting figured out, but it is, it's, it's. You know, it's, it's much bigger than just like a freeze. Like this is a huge problem.
MARSON: One of the issues, I think, for Democrats, you know, for about two months, they've been really rudderless. This is the first time they had a cohesive message in the resistance, if you will, and it was the first time they really found some footing and able to attack Donald Trump and actually score some points.
I mean, Hey, my memo got rescinded, whatever that means, you know, there was, some action. There were Republicans who were very concerned, you know, in Republican states, the Medicaid portals went down, right? So, there was a lot of concern.
And one of the things I think is, you know, we've really heard a lot about this is gonna be a much more focused Trump administration compared to the first. This is gonna be a much more professionalized administration compared to the first. And this was kind of bungled, whichever way…
CANI: This felt like a fumble.
MARSON: Whatever they, whatever they meant to do, they didn't do it well.
On Hobbs’ budget director resigning
BRODIE: So Tony, Barrett mentioned, you know, lots of questions about a lot of money, you know, affecting the state budget. Another potential question affecting the state budget is who is Gov. Hobbs's budget director going to be. Now, typically negotiations don't really start in earnest till a little bit later in the year.
But it seems like potentially a problem that, that the governor's Office of Management, budget does not have a director right now.
CANI: Yeah, I mean, it's a problem in the sense that it's an important job that has a tremendous amount that you have to do in order to get the, you know, the budget approved. And you have to work with and look at the work that the previous budget director did with, you know, in previous sessions where they had to go and talk to individual Republican legislators, figure out what their like priorities are, find a way to make a deal with the, the leadership.
And so yeah, I think it's, it's, it's problematic in the sense that like I'm sure you would like to have a full team, but this stuff, you know, happens where people move on or, you know, it's really not, I'm going to surprise everybody with this: It's really not fun to work in government all the time, especially at that level, especially when you're dealing with like the Legislature and that stuff, and I'm always surprised when people are putting in as much time as they are.
I think to me a lot of these jobs are like, do your jobs, and, and people are normally like, you know, stepping aside. So I don't think it's like that big of a deal that someone's stepped aside, that kind of stuff just happens.
MARSON: You know, it does just happen. I've been in government, I've seen the churn. It usually doesn't happen in the middle of a budget, however. And look, I don't know, Tony may, disagree, but I bet he would actually agree that the last two budgets under Hobbs have been much more Republican-centric.
And I think, you know, Democrats in the Legislature haven't been happy with the last two budgets, right? Some Republicans haven't been happy because it spends, you know, too much, spends a little differently than they would prefer. But Democrats have been hopping mad that the negotiations haven't been, you know, a bit more even. They've been a little bit one-sided.
These last two budgets, I mean, I hear all the time that the current budget that we're in was really driven by the chief of staff for the Arizona House of Representatives, it was a Michael Hunter budget.
CANI: Shout out to Michael Hunter.
MARSON: You know, he, you know, the Republicans really have ruled the last couple of budgets, and I think Democrats are unhappy about that. And part of that stems from an inability to really get top staff, because again, a budget is incredibly complicated, $17 billion, $15 billion whatever a lot of money. It's a lot of money. And there's, it's, it's, it's very intricate. There's no doubt about that. It takes someone who's had years of experience, and I don't think Hobbs's budget director had that kind of experience.
BRODIE: Do you think the fact that the governor's budget director, Sarah Brown, stepped down yesterday, does that impact How this, the budget that will be negotiated before July 1, does that affect that at all, do you think?
MARSON: It, it should, it, it really should affect it because, again, this was the governor's point person on numbers. You know, we were talking before the show about how Janet Napolitano, former governor, would negotiate the budget herself, no staff. Katie Hobbs is not Janet Napolitano, and needs the staff, and needs good staff, and I don't know that she has that.
And but, but the Legislature does. Michael Hunter is a budget guru. Matt Gress …
BRODIE: Who is in the Legislature.
MARSON: Who is on the House Appropriation in the Legislature, on House Appropriations, used to be Sarah Brown, under, under Gov. [Doug] Ducey, but he also had a lot of experience at JLBC, the Legislature's budget arm for years before that. So he was very familiar with a lot of agencies. He didn't just step into the role of creating a budget from nothing, right?
CANI: And he's still gotten a little bit of hot water if you remember when it came to the projections about the flat tax because that was like not true if you remember, like, who was getting the tax cut. They were very manipulative back this, to talk about Matt Gress. And so, you know, I guess experience sometimes comes to the ability to try and deceive the public in order to get something through.
BRODIE: Well, Tony, do you, do you think …
MARSON: I don't, I don't know about deceive. You know, projections are, are just that. They're projections and …
CANI: Well, when you say …
MARSON: I mean, that's like calling Governor Hobbs,, budget a fraud because caseload growth was higher than anticipated. Is it fraud or were they just inaccurate?
CANI: Well, when you say that like a huge percentage of Arizonans are going to get a tax cut, but the vast majority of people won't even get the amount of money that it would take to pay for a month of Netflix, I say that's dishonest.
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